*Conservative Revolutionaries: Transformation and Tradition in the Religious and Political Thought of Charles Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew* Review

In Conservative Revolutionaries, John Oakes reevaluates two important eighteenth-century New England divines: Jonathan Mayhew (1720–1766) and Charles Chauncy (1705–1787). Previous scholarship has long cast these ministers as forward-thinking advocates of the Enlightenment or important precursors to rationalized religion. Though they differed considerably in age, both men pastored influential Boston congregations and were willing to eschew much of the Calvinism that had been considered orthodoxy for New England Congregationalism. Their embrace of Arminianism led to a reconsideration of other significant doctrines. Mayhew questioned the rationality of a Triune God, while Chauncey held private beliefs on universal salvation. Politically, both men staunchly supported the American cause. Mayhew wrote scathing attacks on the Stamp Act before his death in 1766, and Chauncy consistently preached throughout the war on the evils of British tyranny. Evaluating the vast amount of published works by Chauncy and Mayhew, Conservative Revolutionaries endeavors to nuance these scholarly impressions by charting the intellectual development of the two men. Oakes’s work clarifies the extent to which Chauncey and Mayhew departed from Congregationalist orthodoxy, and explores ways in which they retained aspects of the Puritan tradition in their thought. Oakes argues that this continuity with their predecessors—especially with regard to their Biblicism, ecclesiology, and politics—makes it difficult to construe the two men as entirely revolutionary.

The work’s eight chapters are divided into two parts, part one addressing Mayhew and Chauncey’s theological development, part two their political thought. In narrating Mayhew and Chauncy’s theologies, Oakes stresses the ways in which they retained much of the Biblicism of their Puritan forefathers. Chapter one addresses the two pastors’ upbringing, education, and early ministries. In his description of Mayhew and Chauncy’s opposition to revivalism, Oakes argues for the endurance of Calvinist teaching in their early ministries. Rather than being firm Arminians from the beginning (as alleged, in the case of Mayhew, by Charles Akers), Oakes demonstrates that Mayhew only began questioning aspects of Calvinist orthodoxy in 1749, Chauncy in 1758. Chapters two and three describe the aspects of Calvinism that were preserved and modified in their respective shifts toward Arminianism. Both men retained traditional notions of substitutionary atonement but embraced an optimistic anthropology. Throughout the 1750s both men deepened these deviations from Calvinism. Mayhew began to publicly question the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus as illogical Catholic inventions. Chauncy privately adopted a belief in universal salvation by 1760, but did not publish his thoughts until the 1780s. In chapter four, Oakes argues that these innovations from Calvinist orthodoxy were in fact marked by deep continuities with the New England Way. Even after adopting Arminian anthropologies, both men continued the Puritan tradition of urging their congregations to holy and devout lives, warning them of God’s impending judgement if they did not obey. Both men substantiated their “heterodox” theologies with ardent appeals to Scripture. Most significantly, Oakes illustrates that both men remained committed to two of the chief tenants of New England Puritanism: ecclesiology and anti-Catholicism. Both joined their traditionalist colleagues in denouncing the placing of an Anglican bishop in North America. Both supported efforts to suppress the teachings of “popish idolatry.” However forward-thinking their theologies may seem, they were born out of Puritan convictions.

Oakes traces this thread of Puritan convictions through part two of the book on the political thought of the two men. Unlike other scholars who put Mayhew and Chauncy firmly within the Whig tradition (Alan Heimert and Bernard Bailyn), Oakes aims to show how the spiritual concerns of both ministers informed their politics. Chapter five addresses the ministers’ Whig commitments, chapter six their understandings of civil and religious liberty, and chapter seven their considerations of rebellion and revolution. In all these cases, Oakes demonstrates that Chauncy and Mayhew drew upon their Puritan piety and providentialism in developing their political thought. Every position they adopted was reinforced with references from Scripture. The overall effect of these chapters is to problematize the notion that the men were thorough political revolutionaries throughout their lives. Oakes discloses the tension that these men felt in attempting to justify a rebellion against an institution that they had once, as good Whigs, supported.

The book ends by analyzing the common scholarly interpretive traditions of the two men. Oakes cites John Adams as the first to understand Mayhew (and to a lesser extent Chauncy) as a radical thinker, whose writing helped to instigate the Revolution. As Oakes points out throughout the book, this “champion-of-the-Enlightenment” interpretation of the two men has become common in much of the scholarship on eighteenth-century political culture. In the end, Oakes sides with the opinion of Alan Heimert in his description of the two men as “conservative revolutionaries”:

They were, in different times and places, both traditional Calvinists and heterodox theologians; sociopolitical reactionaries and proponents of civil and even military resistance; faithful pastors and outspoken controversialists; scrupulous scholars and wily political operators; and diplomatic defenders and vigorous critics of the status quo.

Conservative Revolutionaries is thoroughly researched. Throughout, Oakes displays a close familiarity with the available works of both Mayhew and Chauncy. He is also quite attentive to previous scholarship. Indeed, the main thrust of each chapter is Oakes’s positioning his interpretation in relationship to existing research. This emphasis on historiographical finetuning, however, gets meticulous at times, making it difficult to perceive the larger implications of Oakes’s findings. Writing a book on two themes in the thought of two men is no easy feat, and the organization of Conservative Revolutionaries is helpful for Oakes’s contention that their theology informed their politics. While Oakes notes several places where the two men differed, transitioning back and forth between their distinct intellectual developments has the potential to get tedious for the reader (especially in chapter five).

These criticisms notwithstanding, the book is the most thorough study of Mayhew and Chauncy written in decades. In explicating the various ways they retained the Calvinism of their youth, Oakes complicates any attempt to regard the men as entirely progressive, theologically or politically. By drawing out the consistent Biblicism of the two men, Oakes’s work provides an interesting case-study to larger considerations about the development of American liberal religion. As Thomas S. Kidd has found with Benjamin Franklin, and Robert Bruce Mullin with Horace Bushnell, remnants of a traditionalist Biblicism continued to mark the intellectual lives of America’s greatest religious free thinkers. Conservative Revolutionaries shows that the road to the American republic and the rise of rationalized religion, was, in part, informed by older Protestant convictions.